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Post by fuguestate on Oct 17, 2018 23:22:39 GMT
But that's exactly what I mean, nowadays anyone can label anything as a "composition" and people are expected to accept it and follow through as though it were a sincere thing. If music were an internet forum, 4'33 would be the finest example of trolling (in the original sense of deliberately doing something just for the sake of eliciting a reaction, not in the more recent derived sense of posting garbage online).
And personally, I couldn't care less about the "concept" of 4'33, but charging admission for it is going a little too far IMO. As you said, the admission fee would be so much better spent paying Mr. Dexter for 4 minutes of whatever, instead of this lottery-tax in the guise of pseudo-intellectual nonsense.
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Post by driscollmusick on Oct 17, 2018 23:24:49 GMT
Frankly, I think 4'33 is a pile of bullcrap hoisted upon a deluded audience that has gone off the deep end. The same way "modern art" in its worst incarnations would accept a piece of blank canvas as "art" because of the hoodoo new-age spiritualist UFOistic significance attached to it. (And let's not bring up the "art" of painting faeces on canvas and putting it up on display, and then having the audacity of charging an admission fee. But hey, we're in a "modern" Politically-Correct society where we are expected to accept anything and everything, including outright bullcrap. And so charlatans continue to rejoice and rip off poor sods too deluded to see through the emperor's invisible clothes.) But, to get back on topic, even Mozart's Musical Joke IMO beats this attempted orchestration of Bach in terms of humor value, so I remain unimpressed by it. A couple friends put on 4'33" when we were in high school. It wasn't as well-known then and the fascinating part of the performance was the audience's reaction. Initial concern gradually overcome by anger, booing, shushing and then almost widespread confusion. It was quite the talk of the school day. Of course, it's not as likely to provoke that same response anymore, now that many people know what it's about, but it was striking to me at the time how "upsettting" people found it. It may not have been "music" but it was certainly performance art.
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Post by fuguestate on Oct 17, 2018 23:34:47 GMT
driscollmusick: like I said, it's trolling at its finest. In this case, trolling the audience. It's the kind of meta-humour certain people in this day and age seem to enjoy, but I don't appreciate. BTW, that timpani toccata and fugue is most impressive. The timpani timbre doesn't really lend itself very well to the kind of delicate melodic writing that Bach writes, and I had trouble hearing many of the pitches clearly. But nevertheless, the timpanist did an impressive job.
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Post by driscollmusick on Oct 17, 2018 23:38:22 GMT
driscollmusick : like I said, it's trolling at its finest. In this case, trolling the audience. It's the kind of meta-humour certain people in this day and age seem to enjoy, but I don't appreciate. BTW, that timpani toccata and fugue is most impressive. The timpani timbre doesn't really lend itself very well to the kind of delicate melodic writing that Bach writes, and I had trouble hearing many of the pitches clearly. But nevertheless, the timpanist did an impressive job. Well, there we must agree to disagree. I find the timpani toccata and fugue a bigger troll than the Cage!
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Post by Bob Porter on Oct 17, 2018 23:50:57 GMT
And then there was the concert where the curtain opened and on stage was a loudspeaker. Eventually sounds started to come from the speaker. Turns out the speaker was hooked up to microphones in the bathroom. True story.
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Post by fuguestate on Oct 17, 2018 23:55:29 GMT
Whether the timpani T&F was trollish or not, you cannot deny the fact that the timpanist did an amazing job. I appreciate that. I'm not some humorless sour old traditionalist, y'know. But the Cage, in my mind, has no merit because all he had to do is to wake up one day with a wacky idea, and then proceed to write a basically empty page of score and hand it to the pianist, whereas the T&F actually required some amount of skill and finesse to pull off. It's the difference between paying for an hour of genuine laughter with a skilled comedian vs. paying for a Huckleberry Finn style performance centered around the provocation of a naked guy running around on stage for a few minutes, that afterwards leaves you only with the feeling of having being swindled.
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Post by fuguestate on Oct 18, 2018 0:05:14 GMT
Bob Porter: See, that's what I'd put in the Huckleberry Finn bin, as opposed to the interesting sight I saw once in a back alley, of a bunch of guys playing Beethoven's 5th on a set of garbage cans filled with various amounts of water to tune to the pitches of the scale and made into makeshift pitched drums. The traditionalist may call that a sacrilege to Beethoven's masterpiece; I see it as a creative interpretation of Beethoven (even if I wouldn't normally go out of my way to attend such a performance!). Projecting sounds from the bathroom on stage, OTOH, is the kind of skill-less endeavor the swindlers in Huckleberry Finn might pull. It's basically glorified toilet humor, which I've left behind ever since graduating from primary school.
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Post by driscollmusick on Oct 18, 2018 0:40:36 GMT
Whether the timpani T&F was trollish or not, you cannot deny the fact that the timpanist did an amazing job. I appreciate that. I'm not some humorless sour old traditionalist, y'know. But the Cage, in my mind, has no merit because all he had to do is to wake up one day with a wacky idea, and then proceed to write a basically empty page of score and hand it to the pianist, whereas the T&F actually required some amount of skill and finesse to pull off. It's the difference between paying for an hour of genuine laughter with a skilled comedian vs. paying for a Huckleberry Finn style performance centered around the provocation of a naked guy running around on stage for a few minutes, that afterwards leaves you only with the feeling of having being swindled. I would suggest you read a bit more about the piece's genesis. He didn't just wake up with a "wacky idea" and by all accounts, Cage was genuine in his musical/philosophical pursuits, whatever their resulting success as enjoyment for the audience member. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4′33″
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Post by fuguestate on Oct 18, 2018 16:27:14 GMT
I'm aware of the history as described on the linked page. I just happen to (strongly) disagree with the philosophy behind the genesis of that piece. I see it as art gone wrong, philosophy pushed too far and gone off the deep end. Consistent in itself, certainly. Otherwise nobody would do it. But in the larger context of things, absolutely insane.
Obviously, my opinion is not shared by some. I'm perfectly fine with that.
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Post by Bob Porter on Oct 19, 2018 1:45:48 GMT
I'm aware of the history as described on the linked page. I just happen to (strongly) disagree with the philosophy behind the genesis of that piece. I see it as art gone wrong, philosophy pushed too far and gone off the deep end. Consistent in itself, certainly. Otherwise nobody would do it. But in the larger context of things, absolutely insane. Obviously, my opinion is not shared by some. I'm perfectly fine with that. While I get 4'33 and a painting of a soup can as art, I get no enjoyment out of them. And yet, I am no one to talk. Art doesn't do that much for me anyway. That said, I once had the opportunity to visit the Louvre. There I was able to stand a few feet away from the Venus di Milo (I know, not the proper name), possibly the most famous sculpture in the world. Then there is the Winged Victory at the top of a grand staircase. Then I was at the back of a crowd trying to see the tiny Mona Lisa. And the its just kept coming. Perhaps the soup can just needs several hundred to a few thousand years of critics saying it's a great work of art before people believe it. To me it would help if it was good art to begin with.
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Post by fuguestate on Oct 19, 2018 16:34:05 GMT
[...] Perhaps the soup can just needs several hundred to a few thousand years of critics saying it's a great work of art before people believe it. In other words, it needs enough propaganda and brainwashing until people start believing what you say. Exactly!!! That's the hammer right on the nail. Whoever came up with the idea of the soup can might have been completely sincere, and one might argue that it's a completely logical and self-consistent consequence of whatever frame of mind or system of philosophy the author subscribed to. But that in itself does not necessarily make it good art. The system of philosophy could have gone off the deep end, folded in upon itself, gloriously liberated from the handicap of reality, completely self-consistent yet makes no sense whatsoever. As Orwell once said: "Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals could believe them."
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Post by gx on Oct 19, 2018 16:48:11 GMT
humm.. I interpret the soup can, as a statement on contemporary culture - - "consumerism"… 'I consumer' And the wry sense of paradoxically pairing the conveyer belt food with art… Art has become an advertisement… well,…. we are certainly bombarded more than ever in this way… ads follow me everywhere.. and more insidious forms are expected to continue… perhaps he was prescient, and to top it all off, it paid off, as well -- noting the irony… the snake has taken it's own tail.. The mentioning of 4'33"… beyond the absurdist provocation, is asking the people - 'what are you hearing?" He brought his Zen philosophy (Suzuki) to composition… how to write a piece w/o writing it.. and, the playful Koan, can the composer erase themselves from the act of composing? One would certainly hope so… Have you seen the one where he plays a cactus with a feather? …no, really! instead of blinding you w science, he Shocks you with silence Oh, those gorilla absurdist… Marcel Duchamp and the rest…trying to shock us into realizing that we're alive
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Post by Dave Dexter on Oct 19, 2018 17:10:26 GMT
Exactly!!! That's the hammer right on the nail. Whoever came up with the idea of the soup can might have been completely sincere, and one might argue that it's a completely logical and self-consistent consequence of whatever frame of mind or system of philosophy the author subscribed to. But that in itself does not necessarily make it good art. That's the thing about art, you don't get to state it's good or bad. You can say it is, of course, I do it myself, but the people who think my music is derivative cookie-cutter shash aren't right* just because they said it. * They're wrong because they're shambling mongrels who've strayed too far from God's light
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Post by fuguestate on Oct 19, 2018 17:33:50 GMT
Dave Dexter : Of course I can say whatever I want about art, including whether it's good or bad art. Nobody else has to believe me, of course.
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Post by Bob Porter on Oct 20, 2018 1:33:56 GMT
For me, music is a visceral experience.
Anyone who has been around me for a while has heard me say this before.
I like music that rips my guts out, throws them on the ground, jumps up and down on them, and stuffs them back in my body. I need to know that I've experienced something. The music can be loud or soft or fast or slow. But it better melt my face, somehow. Otherwise, why should I bother. I don't have music on in the background, I have it in my face. I'm not interested in a little light listening, I want to be shredded.
Live is too short to waste it on anything else.
It's my drug of choice. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing that comes close.
Sorry, I'm home alone for the weekend, and I got my congas out of storage and have been having a blast.
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